六人の嘘つきな大学生 ABC 🔍 | Week 8

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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六人の嘘つきな大学生 Book Club - Week 8 - Final Week!

:sparkler::sparkler::sparkler:

Find the Home thread here!

View the nomination post here!

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Week 8 17th May 2025
Chapters Pt.2 Ch.3-5
Pages 47
Previous week Week 7

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

Trigger Warnings

Summary of trigger warnings

Discussion of topics including:

  • Bullying

  • Suicide

  • Abortion

Proper Nouns

Will be added to throughout the book.

Name Reading Notes
波多 野祥吾 はたの しょうご Narrator of Part 1 - one of the 6 candidates
嶌 衣織 しま いおり One of the 6 candidates - Narrator of Part 2
九賀 蒼太 くが そうた One of the 6 candidates
袴田 亮 はかまだ りょう One of the 6 candidates
矢代 つばさ やしろ つばさ One of the 6 candidates
森久保 公彦 もりくぼ きみひこ One of the 6 candidates
鴻上 達章 こうがみ たつあき Hiring Manager
相楽 ハルキ さがら はるき Famous singer
波多野 芳恵 はたの よしえ Younger sister of 祥吾
鈴江 真希 すずえ まき Employee at スピラリンクス in Part 2

Participation

Will you be reading along with us this week?

  • I’m reading along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m reading this book after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer reading the book
0 voters

If you’ve already read this book but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion! :mag:

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:partying_face: It’s the final week! :partying_face:
The thread is an hour early even for my time here, but I’ll be busy tomorrow, and I’m wanting to justify my own reading ahead today.

Thanks for joining so far! Time to see how the book wraps up :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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Anyone who finishes this book, remember your reward, you can now mark it as read in this thread The Honya Taishou 本屋大賞 Reading Challenge :slight_smile: (year 2022 poll in the main post, 5位)

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できた！

Thoughts

Well that was unexpected! Bits of it anyway. I guess I’ll try to go through thoughts in order (probably should have taken notes):

First, the password. When she entered ジャスミンティー first, I then immediately knew it was wrong, because it was obvious it would go down to one entry left first to raise the stakes. Felt a bit unnecessary though, and the way they revealed how she figured both bits out was a bit silly given how obvious it was to us readers the whole time.

Next, the twist about 嶌! Wow, wasn’t expecting that at all! It really changes basically the entire perception of most of the characters. I’m expecting that it might be a bit polarising between other people here, so really interested to see what you all think. I personally liked it a lot. The fact that it reframes so immediately the things which the other candidates did, which initially I and other people saw as evidence that they were horrible, unchanged people (like the disabled parking space), was kind of crazy. The switch flicked in my mind, and suddenly all the candidates seem like how 波多野 described them - good people, with flaws, but actual real, good people. The bit about ハルキ being her brother was much more obvious, and I kind of mostly expected that. Still, it set up for the lovely bit at the end with 鈴江.

Now, the bit which I’m not 100% so positive on was the reevaluation of the “crimes” and the personalities of the other candidates. I think つばさ didn’t deserve any hate in the first place, so I liked how hers was reframed. It seemed a bit over the top with the volunteering internationally, though. 袴田 might have been the best, because it flipped the switch entirely, and was quite believable. Meanwhile, 森久保, even if it made me see him better, I think that explanation just wasn’t quite as good. I don’t think it absolves him entirely of blame.

With all of this, I think the biggest flaw in this latter half of the book is probably the explanation of the structure of the envelopes, and 九賀’s motivations etc., which is probably why last week felt like a mixed bag. Also the bit about the drinking with 嶌 which 九賀 got so upset about, I don’t think that was cleared up well either.

Still, overall, this last section I really liked. I think it was well-written, it connected up bits from earlier on which kind of stuck out but didn’t make sense, and just generally made me re-evaluate what came before. This does serve to kind of obfuscate some of the things this book didn’t explain quite so well, but overall, I’m always a sucker for an explanation that restores my faith in humanity a little. It’s good to see that a book can both be kind of depressing and out-for throats of the flawed Japanese employment structure, and yet simultaneously show the good, as well of the bad, of the people involved in it.

And, finally, the very end. I can’t think of a better way to finish it off then the 就活生 calling out the company for their lies. Nice.

Now I can’t wait to see what everyone else thinks :stuck_out_tongue:

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I really liked the book! One of my favorite book club books so far. Thanks @Malinkal for running it!

Summary

I liked all the plot twists and how everything was connected. Makes you want to reread the book! (Also I’ll go reread the weekly threads, I tend to skip the speculations because it feels a lot like spoilers, especially when some of you end up being right).
And yes, faith in (fictional) humanity restored :slight_smile:
It was an interesting mix of mystery, commentary on Japan’s hiring culture and also on human nature and judging people in general. It was neat how the book tricked us in that regard, making us judge the characters too harshly, just as the characters did in the book. The final explanations of each character were kind of over the top, but then again they are all supposed to be pretty 優秀.
Personally I thought 九賀’s motives and explanation made sense. The only thing I have trouble with (apart from the 3 tries password thing) is believing that 波多 instantly knew it was 九賀 who did it because of the picture (seriously? he remembers every picture on the website and extrapolated from there in an instant?) But I’m willing to gloss over this because the book was really well done overall.

For those who read the 解説: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzGMiItalTI (or you can binge watch all episodes)

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I was gonna skip it :stuck_out_tongue: but now I’m curious.

My thoughts

There were lots of time where I didn’t enjoy reading the book, for my taste the text was often too dense, too long chapters and not a lot of dialog, and a lot of things that I think could have been shortened. But that could be just my own reading speed making it feel like a drag :sweat_smile:
A lot of twists, probably funnier to read without a book club full of smart people who already called all of them ahead of time x)
In the end I think my review is mostly positive because I was entertained (mostly), and it has a lot of food for thoughts, both on the interview process and on judging people. Not sure though that it’s a book that I would go out of my way to recommend other people to read.

Thanks @Malinkal for running the club!

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Haha, I was right again ! For the wrong reasons again :sweat_smile: I always thought that 「犯人、嶌衣織さんへ」expression suspicious

Plot twist

I also have mixed feelings about it. I agree that the really good one was about 袴田. But it all felt, somehow, a bit forced : after being set up as arch-villains, they all turn out pure as a new-born lamb ? or at least that’s how we should see them ? I don’t buy that. They’re not grey enough for my taste ! Also, it feels forced that this is true for every single one of them, even 九賀

On the whole, I quite liked the book. I may not be a fan of every plot-device and decisions, but the topic was interesting, the writing was solid, it was generally believable. Many thanks to @Malinkal for running the club !

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I’m also finished, yay! It was a great book club, @Malinkal thank you for hosting :clap:

The ending is great. I like happy endings, and it was as much of a happy end as it could be. I’m glad that all six people are turned out to be nice (maybe I still don’t like Kuga though). And I’m especially happy that Hatano found his peace with the whole group discussion thing, and that he managed to show Shima both sides of the moon :slight_smile:

As I said it last week, it still seems a bit unrealistic that Hatano got the real culprit from that photo, but let it be. Maybe he is just that sharp. I’m also glad that he didn’t look inside Shima’s envelop. If I were in his shoes, I’m not sure that I could’ve resisted the temptation.

I like that pretty much all details of the story are linked together, there are no loose ends. Except maybe it would be good if Shima met Kuga once more and shared the contents of the file with him.

Replies

I thought so too. I can try defending Shima that what is obvious for others is not necessarily obvious for the person themself, but it this case…

Wow, that wasn’t actually obvious for me at all and I was very surprised! I’m curious, what made it obvious for you before?

Wait, but wasn’t he involved like for 2 days, and after he realised what was going on he quit? Or did I misunderstood something? I mean, it doesn’t sound grave to me if that’s the came, but I might’ve misunderstood something.

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reply

Maybe I said it a bit wrong, I didn’t necessarily expect them to be 兄妹, but I was 90% sure they were involved in some way. And when it came up about 嶌 being disabled, I remembered the part from when she got annoyed at 鈴江 was when they talked about ハルキ moving to Tokyo with his sister to take care of her when she started university, which stuck out a bit, so it all joined together nicely, and it wasn’t surprising, I’d just not got the part about her being disabled.

It made it seem to me like he kind of knew what was going on, but still turned up the next day and participated in it, before leaving. There was the picture of him with an old man from the envelope as well. So I’m not sure it’s clear whether he actually did anything bad before he left, but if he did then I think he has some responsibility. If he didn’t and it says it somewhere then I’m probably being too harsh on him

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On 森久保

They had strong suspicions after day 1 but they were still employed as バイト so being 真面目 and all they had to show up, and they quit immediately: 「翌日もシフトが入ってたんで行くことには行ったんですけど、そこですぐに辞めたいって言って逃げ出しました」. For the old man, it’s 九賀 who directed him to 森久保 (that was explained earlier).

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Ah, I missed the part about 九賀 directing the old man to him, that does change things, thanks. Still unsure why they bothered turning up the next day if they were going to just go to the university about it anyway, but Japan, I guess.

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Me too ! I wasn’t going to read it but … now I want to see the skit. Thank you, @miwuc

Oh, and ショーハショーテン ! is really good too !

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Basically this skit is mentioned in the 解説 so if you wanna watch it, it would be optimal to watch it beforehand so you know what they’re talking about!

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I made it to the other end :hot_face:. This was my first ABC, and it was very challenging to keep up, but what’s life without challenges? Thank you for organizing @Malinkal!

The good, the bad and the corny

This book felt quite flawed in a lot of ways, most of which have already been mentioned. I’m with everyone who already said that some things were too repetitive, overexplained or overly convenient, and that the final revelations about the characters went too far and made them look too good for this world.

As expected, there wasn’t a really convincing reason why Hatano picked such a hard to guess password and such a confusing way to label his zip file…guess I’ll have to live with it.

Still, every time I got too frustrated about these flaws, the book swung around and gave me something I liked, mostly small moments where one of the characters felt really relatable, and the overall sense that this is a story that’ll keep you guessing and you can never let your guard down because the next reveal is right around the corner. I’m with @Akashelia that reading this with a club is the best way to read it, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for solo reading.

Was there anything in particular that bothered you about the nomikai reveal, or was it just another thing that’s just too convenient?

I also felt it was obvious, but mostly for statistical reasons, so to speak. There was a certain point in the story where I thought, ok, only 50 pages left and the only real mysteries that haven’t been adressed yet are Shima’s envelope and why that singer gets mentioned twice per chapter, so surely the two must be connected.

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Finished the book!
I really enjoyed it! While some parts in the second half were slow, and some parts that I didn’t buy, overall I really enjoyed it and it’s now one of my favorite Japanese books.
Now to watch the movie :squinting_face_with_tongue:

I’ll skip my thoughts that just overlap with what people have said here.

Summary

While the reveal of the culprit and his reasoning was disappointing to me, there were plenty of other well executed twists that made up for it.

A lot of things make sense now, like how much priority seats/parking were brought up as well as her taking taxis all the time.
By the way, in Japan a lot of people with disabilities will have a red tag on their bags to show that they have a reason to be in the priority seats (or more generally that they may need medical attention). But it looks like Shima-san doesn’t use it.

While some of it feels a bit forced, I liked the theme of showing “you can’t judge a person’s whole character by one thing they did” by showing the reader that there was information they didn’t know that paints things in a different light.
Plus the interviews at the end are with the people’s friends, so it’s reasonable that they’d give glowing reviews.

I’m curious what people make of the letter from Hatano-san to HR.
To me it sounds like he wrote it fairly soon after the group discussion, and before he made the ZIP file.
My guess is he went through the 5 stages of grief and during the bargaining stage he went “okay he’s how I can still get the 内定” but later came to his senses. Maybe the letter got stuck under the board and he thought he had just lost it.

Also from the 解説: 二転三転 is a very useful Japanese word! I use it often at work to apologize when I change my mind on something.

I’m going to be thinking about this book and Japanese business culture for a while so I will probably comment more later!

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Thanks for making me remember this!
I meant to say this week but the film is as of just a few weeks ago up on streaming services to rent here in Japan. Not sure about availability overseas, so if anyone finds it available somewhere, please let us know!
I know @polv has seen the film adaptation already, and iirc they said (maybe spoiler warning) that the timeline is simplified a bit to make it easier to follow (no flashback interviews after each section), and the story changed slightly/one or two characters were removed (I believe ハルキ?).

On top of that, there’s also a Manga adaptation.
I believe it maps volume 1 to first half and volume 2 to second half - following the novel pretty closely - but I think volume 3 differs from the novel (not sure if it’s an alternative ending, but it seems like it from what I read). It’s also on offer right now :stuck_out_tongue:

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summary and thoughts

I find the timeline of the cutscenes confusing. Interviews are solved, because there are dates. However, it doesn’t help much for meeting the sis.

Poor defendants’ excuses, maybe, but not really, they work, but hard to truly empathize? I might biased a little by watching the movie too. excuses fixed.

The singer is too well connected to the story. But when that already happens, 嶌 can’t be helped.

Not sure if it is discussed, but if it is possible for company rivals to send the envelope… before 九賀 explains the logic (though the possible logic exists before the explanation).

The movie did not only fix the timeline, but also tried to conclude well in 2-3 hours. Manga series might be give a better fix without curbing.

Anyway, the story is good in principle, and so makes a good story. Learn some vocabularies too, or maybe just I don’t read enough educated adult literature.

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Finished as well!

Thoughts on last 2 weeks

Wasn’t a fan of last week‘s section, or rather the meeting with Kuga, it didn’t pull me in as much (although I kind of understood his reasoning and I can understand his frustration), but I really liked how this week finished. I actually really enjoyed the file Hatano left, where he describes all wrongdoings or missteps as just one part of someone’s personality. And I liked how basically everyone was absolved of their terrible statements/actions by giving more context. I loved the decanter story :smiley:
Also, in Shima’s interviews with everyone, it was very nicely done how the author misleads you to think that e.g. Morikubo is a bad person because he says things like 騙されたほうが悪い, making him sound like a terrible person, but once you know what question Shima’s asked, it’s just him beating himself up about it.
In the last part where all of those misunderstandings were cleared up, I don’t feel like everyone was overly painted as 善人. They all still have their quirks, most of them are still described as being „difficult“ or „peculiar“ by their friends, so they do each have their issues and aren’t all perfect.
The ハルキ thing actually surprised me, it felt very convenient. But it still was a nice way to close out the question of Shima’s envelope. (although I really thought she disliked him, just from her reaction to her colleague talking about him. maybe I need to reread those sections through the eyes of a little sister)

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Some thoughts:

  • I’m not 100% sure, but my interpretation was that the interviewee at the end was tricked by the HR person’s lies. It would go against the point of the book if someone actually could judge someone else’s honesty just from a brief interaction. 嶌 liked her because her unjustified self-confidence reminded her of her younger self.
  • On the other hand, 嶌’s belief that she knows the interviewee’s character also seems to contradict the overall message. Surely it would make more sense to have a “we don’t know if she’ll be good, but let’s give her a chance”-style scene instead?
  • If all the candidates actually had justifications for their “bad” actions, does that mean that the hiring process actually worked pretty well? :thinking:

Some grievances:

  • I reviewed the parking garage scene and 九賀’s dialogue does not seem plausible for someone who actually had a good reason to use the handicap space.
  • Some of the candidate’s “crimes” were pretty minor to begin with, but I accepted that they were crappy people at the author’s insistence. It’s pretty annoying to then be told that I shouldn’t have judged them so harshly.
  • This whole story requires that none of the candidates explain their circumstances in the group discussion…
  • The way that they were blackmailed into lying about the dates of the photos was not convincing at all. Would they even care about the blackmail if they were all absolved by their schools and such anyway?
  • 波多野 knew 九賀 was upset at everyone because of the drinking party, but didn’t immediately suspect he was the culprit??
  • When 波多野 figured out the culprit during the group discussion, his internal monologue went on about how he truly trusted them, how he truly 大好き’d them, etc (that’s how the author convinced us that the culprit was 嶌). We’re really supposed to believe that he felt that strongly about 九賀?
  • The contents of 嶌’s envelope weren’t consequential enough to really matter. On the other hand, they also weren’t inconsequential enough for a good “she built this up in her mind for years when she shouldn’t have worried about it” moment either.
  • The letter under the floorboards was also underwhelming. 波多野 thought about selling out 嶌 but decided not to. That doesn’t really change how I view the character or anything.
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Finished!

I really liked the ending, party because it was happy, and party because it nicely connected all the remaining dots. I could probably list a few things that didn’t seem so realistic to me, but it wouldn’t really make the story worse as a whole. (It would be just one side of the moon after all :full_moon_face:)

What I really liked, is that there were so many times I’d made myself believe there would be no more twists, so I was surprised quite often. A great book overall!

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